Would it be possible to 'fix' the x,y pos of the Node in a Graph visualization?

[dennisquintel]

So that it's more easily recognizable for the Quintellers that work on a (sub)graph?

[Richard-Deuchler]

related to
quintel/atlas#9
quintel/atlas#10

[antw]

@dennisschoenmakers Yes and no. Graphviz allows us to define "ranks" which are supposedly used to arrange nodes into groups or columns, but I haven't yet had the chance to try it out. There are conflicting articles on whether x,y positioning is possible, but the prevailing opinions seems to be "trust Graphviz to to the right thing"; which, in fairness, it does for smaller graphs. Clearly it doesn't once you grow beyond the size of the agriculture graph.

I have a few ideas for things which could do by reusing the SVG diagram on ETEngine; perhaps I could box a few days to a week sometime in September to try to sort something out... once the more pressing tasks have been completed?

[antw]

Is this still considered a problem? I know it is, in the sense that GraphViz still outputs large, messy diagrams, but I don't know how often (if ever) those diagrams are being used?

I think solving this (and also #10) will require us to drop GraphViz and switch to the an SVG diagram, as described above.